


Someone Like Me

by linasane



Series: Tumblr Prompts [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: (sort of), M/M, Nerd Dean, Punk Castiel, Punk Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-08 18:13:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1951167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linasane/pseuds/linasane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt: Highschool AU. Nerd!Dean and punk!Cas. Dean /wants/ to be a rebel, but he doesn't want to set a bad example for Sammy and disappoint his parents and teachers so he stays in line and gets good grades. Cas isn't outright REBELLIOUS, but he does his own thing. More than a few piercings, dress code violations, and (somehow) tattoos. One day Dean gets a wild hair and gets a single earring in one ear. Cas compliments him on it in the hallway the next day. Schmooop! :D</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dean stares into the tattoo shop as he walks by, wishing he had the guts to actually walk in one day, but knowing he won’t do it.  His job isn’t to go out and get tattoos or piercings, his job is to get straight A’s and take care of his little brother.  And setting such an example for Sammy definitely wouldn’t be taking care of him.

But then Charlie catches him staring.

“Whatcha looking at?” she asks, pulling him out of his thoughts.

“Nothing,” he says, tearing his gaze away guiltily. 

“Aw, come on, Dean,” Charlie says, “I know you better than that.  You were all laser focused on the tattoo shop over there.” 

“I was not,” Dean protests.

“You want a tattoo-oo,” Charlie sing-songs at him, teasing smirk on her face, “Goody-two-shoes Dean Winchester wants a tattoo!” 

“Not a tattoo!” Dean finds himself blurting, too loudly.  “Not a tattoo,” he repeats quietly, “But maybe a piercing.”  He feels guilty just saying it out loud. 

Charlie just smiles at him encouragingly.  “You should go for it!” she tells him.  When Dean shakes his head, she presses on.  “If it’s something you want, you should do it,” she says, nudging him with a shoulder, “Come on, I’ll even go in with you.  I’ve been wanting to get another tattoo anyways, so I might as well go check those guys out.” 

Lost in conflicted thought, it takes Dean a second to process everything Charlie’s said.  When he does, only one thing really sticks.

“You have a tattoo??”  How did he not know this about his best friend?

Charlie just nods, “Yep.”

“What is it?” Dean asks, “ _Where_  is it?”

Charlie looks around and then pulls the side of her shirt up above her ribcage to reveal–

“Is that Princess Leia and…a 20 sided die?”

Charlie shrugs at her friend’s astonished expression.  “It was Comic Con.”

Dean stops walking at this point, head spinning with this newfound information.  Charlie’s one of the most responsible people he knows.  She reads like a book a day, never gets in trouble with her parents, she’s on the freaking  _honor roll_ , and apparently she has a tattoo.  So maybe Dean could get the piercing he wants and still set a good example for Sammy.  After all, a tiny piece of metal is way tamer than a bunch of ink, right?

That train of thought is how Dean ends up in a chair in the tattoo shop not twenty minutes later, leg bouncing with nervous energy.

“First piercing?” the piercer, a burly tattooed guy named Benny, asks him.

Dean nods a bit shakily. “How could you tell?” he asks.

Benny chuckles.  “Relax, brother.  I’ll walk you through the whole process and let you know what I’m going to do before I do it.  You’ll be fine, I promise.

True to his word, Benny calmly walks Dean through the steps of getting a piercing and taking care of it, and before Dean knows it, there’s a shiny piece of metal through the cartilage of his right ear.  He loves it immediately, and thanks Benny profusely as he pays and walks out of the shop.

Charlie looks up at the giant grin he’s got on his face and can’t help but smile herself.  But then the smile fades into something else: a furrowed brow and pursed lips.

“What?” Dean asks, instantly worried.

“It’s nothing,” Charlie reassures him, “Just…how much do you trust me?”

Dean trusts his best friend with his life, but he’s not about to let her know that without knowing what she wants.  “Why?” he asks, cautiously.

“I just,” Charlie says, “The piercing looks super awesome and all, but I feel like it’s missing something.  And I know just how to fix it.  Will you let me, Dean?  Please?”

Dean looks at his friend’s puppy dog eyes and sighs, “What did you have in mind?”

* * *

That’s how Dean ends up at school on Monday morning rocking not only his new piercing, but also a brand new faux hawk, courtesy of one Charlie Bradbury.

He’d been surprised when he returned home on Friday and his parents hadn’t had a problem with either new change.  Sammy had said they were “cool,” but definitely not something he’d ever do, and Dean’s worries of corrupting his little brother had all but vanished.  He’d spent the rest of the weekend feeling pretty damn good about himself.

But now, sitting alone at a lunch table under the unfaltering gaze and judgment of his peers, he’s starting to doubt his decisions.  God, why couldn’t he and Charlie have gone to the same school?  He knows he’d feel much better about this with his best friend by his side.

His self-conscious anxiety reaches an all time high when he spots Castiel Novak waiting in the cafeteria line.  Who does Dean even think he is?  Yeah, the new earring and haircut make him  _feel_ cool, but they don’t make him any different today than the awkward nerd he was on Friday.

Cas, though, Cas is cool.  Cas has piercings not only in his ears, but in his lip and eyebrow too.  He wears too tight jeans and a black leather jacket that probably goes against the school dress code in five different ways.  He even has a tattoo – a rosary that starts at his left wrist and snakes up his arm.  Cas is the smartest kid in their class and he’s – oh crap, he’s headed right for Dean’s table 

Dean swallows nervously and braces for whatever verbal beat down he’s about to receive. 

But Castiel just sets his tray on the table and slides into the seat across from him.

“Hello, Dean,” he says calmly, as if they do this every day, “I like the new look.”

Dean knows he’s blushing at that, but he manages to stutter out a “thank you,” briefly making eye contact with the other boy before dropping his gaze back down to his food.  The two of them lapse into a, surprisingly, comfortable silence after that.  Dean wants to say something, but he has no idea what.  Castiel freaking Novak chose to sit at his lunch table, and  _he complimented his new look_.  This has to be a dream.  Dean pinches his arm under the table, but when he flicks his eyes up, Cas is still there.

“I, uh, I like your tattoo,” he offers, cheeks burning.

"Yeah?” Cas asks.  Dean nods, and a wide grin spreads across the other boy’s face.  “Cool,” he says.

Silence prevails once again, but this time Cas is the one to break it.

“So I was thinking,” he says, waiting for Dean to make eye contact before continuing, “you and I should go out some time.”

Dean’s glad he didn’t have any food in his mouth, because he thinks he would’ve spit it out at that.

“What?” he blurts out, “Why?”

Cas’s face falls at that, smile turning down at the corners, and Dean regrets his outburst immediately.

“I mean,” he corrects himself, “Why would  _you_ want to go out with  _me_?”

Cas looks confused at the question, head tilting minutely to the side.  “Because I like you,” he says simply.

“Seriously?” Dean says, “How come you never said anything before?”

The other boy shrugs his leather-clad shoulders.  “I figured someone like you would never be interested in someone like me,” he explains, “but after your little makeover, I thought maybe I had a chance.  So what do you say?  Do you want to go out with me, Dean?”

Dean smiles and nods without hesitation as he meets an uncertain blue gaze.  “Yeah, Cas,” he says, “I do.”

* * *

A week later, Dean finds himself back under the judgmental stares of his classmates as he walks down the hallway hand in hand with Cas, his boyfriend’s leather jacket draped over his shoulders.  But this time, he doesn’t feel self-conscious.

This time, he’s completely content as he gives Cas a kiss on the cheek when they part outside his English class, agreeing to meet back up for lunch.

Yeah, this time, Dean feels pretty freaking awesome.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was asked to write more of this fic, so enjoy a little part 2 :).

“Did you ever think you’d be here?” Cas asks suddenly from where he’s pressed up against Dean’s side.

They’ve been sitting in comfortable silence for a while now, eyes closed, arms wrapped around each other, heads tilted back to rest against the metal behind them.  They’re hidden under the bleachers, enjoying each other’s company instead of their fourth period classes.  It’s not that Dean’s suddenly become some rule-breaking slacker who ditches class – he’s still getting his work done and setting a good example for Sammy – but sometimes he just needs to take a moment to be with his boyfriend in the middle of the day.  After all, there are only so many moments left before graduation.

What do you mean?” Dean asks, opening his eyes and turning to look at the other boy.

Cas looks back at Dean and shrugs, “I don’t know.  Under the bleachers with the school’s resident delinquent?”

“You’re not a delinquent, Cas,” Dean says.  And it’s true.  Cas is smart and gets better grades than even  _he_  does, it’s only his outward appearance that has the rest of their class convinced he’s a criminal – someone to be feared.

But Cas just sighs.  “According to everyone else, I am,” he says, turning to stare back towards the school.

It hurts to see his boyfriend like this.  It’s a side of Cas he never saw until they had been dating for a few weeks.  In front of everyone else, Cas is so tough, always acting as though other people’s judgment can’t touch him. But now Dean knows that it does get to him, and seeing someone so wonderful so upset isn’t something he can just let go.

“Hey,” he says, gently turning Cas back to face him, “Not according to me, you’re not.  Not according to Charlie, or my mom and dad, or Sammy.  Hell, your  _brother’s_  even said you’re awesome, and he wasn’t even joking at the time.”  It’s true.  Gabriel had, in an uncharacteristic moment of seriousness, told Cas just how proud he was of his little brother.

Dean cups a hand around the side of his boyfriend’s face and pulls him in for a soft, chaste kiss.  “Not according to the people who matter, Cas,” he says when they pull apart.

The other boy smiles, then, and Dean’s glad to see it.  Cas turns back away, but only so he can comfortably wrap an arm around his Dean’s waist and rest his head on his shoulder.

“What am I going to do without you?” he asks after a moment.

“You?” Dean says, resting his head on top of the other boy’s, “I think you mean what am  _I_  gonna do when we graduate and you leave me in your dust.”

Castiel sits back up then, so suddenly that he almost headbutts Dean in the process.

“You’re not leaving Lawrence?” he says, eyes wide.

Dean shakes his head.  “I have to save up some money and figure out I want to do with my life first,” he explains, leaving out the fact that what he really wants to do is become a piercer, because it’s not like that’s something he’ll ever really end up doing.  He pauses for a moment before continuing, confused, “Wait.  So you’re not leaving?  I figured you already had your life all planned out, and you’d be heading off to some fancy college or something.”

Cas is smiling now, even wider than the first time, blue eyes crinkling at the corners.  “I’m not leaving either, Dean,” he says, and then his smile shifts into a teasing smirk as he continues, “I mean, I do already have my life figured out, of course.  But none of my plans involve leaving the state.”

“Asshole,” Dean mutters, unable to hold back his answering grin as he pulls Cas back down to rest on his shoulder.  “So what are these plans, anyway?”

“I’m going to become a tattoo artist,” he announces proudly, “I’ve already got an apprenticeship set up with one of the shops in town.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dean asks, “What kind of stuff do you want to tattoo?”

Cas is silent for a moment, thinking.  Then he grabs a Sharpie out of his pocket, tugs Dean’s arm into his lap, and says, “I’ll show you.”

Dean watches in surprise as his boyfriend puts the pen to his arm and gets to work.  “You just carry that around with you everywhere?” he asks.

“Well, you never know when you’re going to be inspired.”

“Oh, so you’re  _inspired_  by me then, huh?”

Cas takes a moment to shoot Dean a glare that clearly says  _you’re_ insufferable, but the other boy just smiles back at him.

“Don’t even pretend you’re not,” he teases.

“Uh-huh,” Cas says, tucking his bottom lip between his teeth as he gets back to work, though he can’t stop the sides of his mouth from turning up just a little bit.

They sit there in silence once again, Dean watching as Cas produces a beautiful design of looping black lines across his forearm.

When he’s finally finished, he sits back to admire the finished product, turning Dean’s arm this way and that and admiring his handiwork.

“Wait a minute,” Dean says, “Aren’t you going to sign it?  Artists always have to sign their work, right?”

“Not tattoo artists,” Cas corrects, “I mean, you don’t really want someone’s name on you permanently unless it’s someone who’s going to be around as long as the ink is, right?”

“Well how do you know you’re not going to be around forever?” Dean asks, “I mean, I know we’re just in high school now, but how do you this isn’t, I don’t know,  _it_?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Dean,” Cas say offhandedly, like he’s stating a simple fact of life, “Someone like you isn’t going to end up with someone like me.”  And once again it hurts Dean to see that his boyfriend has such a low opinion of himself.

“We’ll see about that,” he says, deciding right then and there that he’ll prove the other boy wrong.

* * *

Years later, he will, as Cas sits him down in the tattoo and piercing shop that they own together and recreates his original design on Dean’s arm in permanent, dark black ink…signature and all.


End file.
